The origins of Big Dead Place

Johnson got his first job at McMurdo Station in 1999, working as a dishwasher. It wasn't long before he began writing his newsletter.

This is how he described his job in Big Dead Place:

I worked Midrats (midnight ration) as a DA (Dining Attendant) in the Galley.

We washed dishes, scrubbed pots, vacuumed the dining area, scouted for spray bottles of disinfectant to wipe the tables and mixed Bug Juice (industrial strength kool-aid). Most of us on the Midrats crew were fingees (F***ing New Guys).

The Galley might as well have been in Nebraska.

Stainless steel, hot water, the smells of baking chicken and boiling potatoes and butterscotch, all to a repetitious soundtrack of Foreigner and The Eagles.

I often forgot where I was, until I went outside in the cold and wind to dump cardboard or food waste in the dumpsters off the dock.

But it wasn't the mundane work that came as a surprise to Johnson—it was the bizarrely bureaucratic culture of McMurdo. He wrote:

I have never heard one person say that the most difficult thing about Antarctica is working outside, or being cold.

I have never heard one person imply that Antarctica's tough physical environment would be the main reason not to return.

I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it's the world's highest, driest, coldest, or whatever.

People leave because of the bullshit.

Johnson died by suicide in 2012, so he can't expand on what the "bullshit" was.

But some of his former workmates offered some insight.

"You're stuck there, you're institutionalised, you've agreed to do this contract, we're not bad people but we have to deal with this mediocre management," said Kathy Blumm, who spent 36 months working at McMurdo in the late '90s and early 2000s.

She says most people's perceptions of working in Antarctica don't match the reality.

"Everybody thinks you go down there and it's this beautiful, pristine place and that we're all scientists down there," Ms Blumm said.

"In actuality a large part are tradies or basic logistics that need to support the science."

She and Johnson became close friends while working together on the waste management team.

While Ms Blumm says the opportunity to spend time in such a unique location was difficult to pass up, what was challenging was that the majority of Raytheon management was based in Denver — a long way from the realities of Antarctica.

"We're in this harsh cold environment doing day-to-day jobs dictated by people that are in a completely different environment, that just can't conceptualise what we're doing or how we're doing it," she said.

"It just defies logic on a certain level, and you just have to reach for humour at that point."

And that's exactly what Johnson did with Big Dead Place.

He satirised many things that took place on the station, including the time some female crew hung up a shower curtain for extra privacy in the bathroom while men visited the nearby co-ed sauna.

A manager confiscated the shower curtain because it was considered unauthorised.

A specially trained agent of NSF Station Services invaded Hotel California on Tuesday, apprehending and seizing an unauthorised shower curtain.

The shower curtain, which behaved in a hostile manner when questioned by authorities, has been menacing residents of the dorms for weeks.

"It got so bad I was scared to go to the bathroom," said one terrified resident.

"I never knew what that shower curtain was doing there or where it had come from. It scared me. It just hung there like it owned the place. I'm glad it's over now".

NSF officials, who had been searching for the shower curtain for questioning in its involvement with a string of vapor barrier related activities, refused to disclose the exact nature of the crimes committed by the crafty shower partition.

"We can't say what happened, or what was wrong with the shower curtain," said NSF rep Jack Bewsher.

"But we can say it was our duty to apprehend the suspect before certain disaster struck. The NSF is committed to enhancing the quality of life for USAP participants."

The book was met with relative success—rave reviews and even talk of developing the idea into a TV series.

Sue Long worked alongside Johnson at McMurdo in 2000 and believes Big Dead Place portrays a very different and accurate version of Antarctica.

"I feel like Nicholas did something special, in that everything that I had read about Antarctica was about heroics and exploration and Nicholas really told about the humanistic, quirky part ," Ms Long said.

It is difficult to assess the impact Big Dead Place has had on the culture of McMurdo Station, but Ms Blumm says for those who have worked down there and read the book, it generally garners one of two responses.